Smoke Screen
by PrincessCheese
Summary: A little Dair ditty, written years ago and discovered recently. ONESHOT - Blair and Dan's friendship at Yale is defined by the rules they don't break.


Found this on my computer and it was basically complete, can be seen as a sequel to "Gray Twilight". Written so very long ago when I thought that Blair and Dan might go to Yale together....

I own nothing and I make even less.

I hope you enjoy.

* * *

Smoke Screen

"You light up another cigarette and I pour the wine"

It was a filthy habit that I picked up half way through my first semester, the curse of the English major, cheap coffee and even cheaper cigarettes. Except with her, perhaps the fact that she studied Law as a joint major made her immune, with her I drank wine that cost more than I spent on food for the month and Cigarettes imported from England that were so velvety smooth that they seemed to improve the air rather than taint it, but whenever she pulls the box out of the drawer in her bedside cabinet the number seems to have diminished slightly since my last visit.

I try not to think about the fact that at the kegger she dragged me to soon after we decided to try again at the friend thing when I offered her one of my Marlboro Reds she confessed that she only smoked after sex and even then never Marlboros. That statement showed me the two rules that would act to define and protected our friendship. Rule one was I never wanted to know about her romantic life rule two we never deny who we are, she is and always will be Blair which meant to be her friend I had to learn to stop punishing myself for enjoying the wine given to her by her father and start savouring the cigarettes given to her by the nameless man who shared her bed.

I couldn't be certain of who shared Blair's cigarettes, gossip girl didn't make it to Yale and I never was any good at playing the sleuth, but it gives me some sort of perverse pleasure to know to think that if he is keeping as close an eye on the number in each box as I was it wouldn't escape him that someone else was enjoying his vice I hope that he was keeping an eye, Blair deserved someone who would.

We never shared cigarettes of course but for a while, the April of junior year I even drank alone, the fact that almost every study session was interrupted by fervent phone calls helping the wine what she abstained from flow easier still down my throat. Lent she said when I asked her why, as if it was an obvious answer coming from a WASP princess who only visited Church for weddings, funerals and as I'd learnt from one of our late night conversations "morning-after confessions", I made sure to hide the Easter card Grandma Humphrey sent over next time she was in my dorm room.

The third unspoken rule of our friendship that whilst we rarely felt the need to lie to one another, neither of us would call the other out if they caught them in a lie, so when she barely picked at the Triple chocolate brownie I had bought her religiously every 4 weeks since the first time I realised that it was the quickest way to a pre menstrual Blair's heart, I pretend not to notice.

3 weeks later when she called me to pick her up from sick bay at 3am wearing scrubs I took her back to my own dorm and held her as she cried herself to sleep. The next day she explained the tears as exhaustion following a terrible allergic reaction to her bedding, of course she had the mattress and sheets replaced by 10 am and I pretended not to notice the blood stains as the offensive items are loaded into the back of the van, being friends with Blair I learnt to pretend not to notice a lot of things, and wondered how Serena ever kept track of which version of the script Blair was reading at any one time.

After that night the number of cigarettes stopped going down in between study sessions. I never asked her about that night and perhaps that makes me a coward. The same cowardice that stopped me from asking who shared her cigarettes stopped me from asking about that night. In both instances I was scared of the answer it turns out some rules aren't meant to be broken.

* * *

_H__e_ could have been there in an hour and maybe he would have if I asked. Instead I scrolled to speed dial 7 and when I heard the girl in the background tried not to let the frown into my voice. When I heard him issue her marching orders as he rushed to get to me I half let out a smile, I would have let it out completely if I had known how much I'd miss them in the coming months.

I had failed to achieve the most basic of tasks, a basic human function, something millions of woman excel in every year without either qualifications or affluence and my decrepit body failed at. Moreover, in the wake of this failure I had not turned not to my triumvirate of non-judgement but to the man who smoked my cigarettes and drank my Chianti in exchange for conversations which would have gone over Nate's head, bored Serena and been foreplay to Chuck. I don't know if this move was my mind's way of punishing me for my inadequacy or protecting me from people who knew that my bedding was washed in organic hypoallergenic non-biological detergent.

Not that Dan believed my lies, that wasn't the point, the point was that he knew not to question them. There was something to be said for forming friendships at an age where your ground rules revolve around more than who gets to swing first and who has to push. With Dan the rule was neither of us pushed. Rule one meant I would never ask him if he thought the path of bed notches he was carving for himself was supposed to lead back to Serena or away from her and rule two meant he would never expect anything other than a snort and some snark if he ever asked me who left behind the cigarettes.

Not that the cigarettes were an issue Dan smoked the last one a week after that night afterwards he rocked back on his chair and stretched his arms above his head, just enough to give me a peek at what hide beneath his hideous Ramones t-shirt, and declared that he was quitting his dirty habit. In that moment I decided I would too.

A month later Gossip Girl snapped me coming out of an appointment at my OB/GYN and as the result of years of breeding being atrophied by months of being carefree at Yale I made the mistake of wiping away a tear before stepping into the limo back to Yale. _He_ turned up less than a day later with eyes brimming over with an emotion I didn't think he had in his repertoire, his name alone got his transfer to Yale accepted and the family donation allowed him to start classes the following Monday. They don't make patches for playboys so I sent an S.O.S to Dorota for a carton of 20 boxes and tried to forget about living by my own rules and the other reasons I could have for wanted to rip that Ramones' t-shirt off Dan Humphrey's chest.

Mellie drank Vodka and took all Dan's core subjects the year before, she was older, which apparently was a good thing in college, her parents were right wing academics who adored Dan's lowly background almost as much as Dan loved running his hands through blonde tresses again. So I took to smoking so much I had to bribe the housing officer not to evict me and he took to spending his time with this woman who had so much of Serena and Vanessa in her that there was hardly space for a personality of her own let alone a sprinkling of what I thought he needed in a woman.

* * *

Three years later I escaped onto a deserted balcony on the pretence of making a call but really to check if my mother was right when she said that the ring that adorned the fourth finger of my left hand really did rival all the stars in the sky. I was only out there a couple of minutes when I finally discovered the answer to the only question I never asked Dan Humphrey. The new Mellie was there; I had stopped learning their names, it made it easier to implement rule one of our friendship, but this time apparently so had Dan.

"How could you Dan" she screamed as she all but smashed through the doors to my refuge.

"I'm sorry ok" I heard Dan mumble as he followed her, closing the doors behind him to stop prying ears.

"Sorry, we have been dating for 5 months and you call me by other girl's name, her name! Of all the names in the world you call me the name of the woman you have been in love with since High School."

"I am not in love with her, I love you! you know I love you, I said your name, they rhyme and it's noisy." He pleaded and part of me wanted to step forward and defend him from "Sabrina", he couldn't help his love of Serena, it was a part of his Humphrey DNA to be in love with the Rhodes women. He couldn't stop loving her any easier than he could stop his hair from doing that Irish version of a jewfro. If the fact that she was about to become a crown princess of Saudi Arabia was not deterrent Marina's whines weren't going to help

But Karena wasn't backing down "What about the fact that you have been staring at her all night?"

"She is my friend" he ground out through gritted teeth "If you can't handle that than maybe things aren't going to work out between us"

"You would choose a woman who is getting married in a matter of months over me?" she asked eyes full of something I'd imagine was hope if I weren't so jaded.

"Don't make me choose, because she will always win"

"But don't you see Dan, you can choose her a hundred times she will never choose you" she spat and I felt my heartbreak a little in sympathy.

"I would never ask her to"

"You are as fucked up as these socialites; I really thought you were different." She all but growled as if that was supposed to be an insult.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you Claire" was his whispered reply.

As she ripped the door open the light from the party poured onto the balcony and illuminated my hiding space. He asked me how much I had heard and I told him I hadn't been able to make out anything over the noise of the band. He smiled and walked back into the party and I thanked god for rule number 3.


End file.
